


snapped thread

by MermaidMarie



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Depression, Episode: s04e10 All That Hard Glossy Armor, Gen, M/M, unresolved in general
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 04:09:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20285164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidMarie/pseuds/MermaidMarie
Summary: In which Quentin is at the end of his rope.





	snapped thread

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: vague passive suicidal ideation.   
This is just a short look into the state that Quentin was in when he'd lost hope. I'm sorry for writing it. I'm sad.

Quentin stayed by the stairs, curling in on himself. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be anywhere. Everything they’d been doing, everything they’d been trying, the one _fucking_ hope he’d had—it was all falling apart. There was nothing left to cling to.

Julia approached. Guiltily, all Quentin could feel was dread in the pit of his stomach. The last thing he wanted was to talk.

She leaned on the banister. “This isn’t over,” she said.

Quentin might’ve laughed, if everything wasn’t so dark and empty. “Yes, it is,” was all he could manage. The words felt like sandpaper as it was.

“No, it’s not,” Julia replied. Her eyes were searching, her shoulders back. Quentin wondered how much she was carrying, and how she was carrying it so much better than him. “I’m gonna figure out whatever the hell this Binder is all about and become a goddess again.”

“Okay, that’s not gonna make a difference,” Quentin said, half to himself. It felt like no one could hear him these days.

“Yeah, there’s a ton of reasons it won’t, but when has that stopped us?”

_First time for everything, _Quentin thought, bitterly. This was the end; there was no solving this one. They’d finally reached the moment where they couldn’t figure it out anymore. After all the bullshit they’d been through, they’d hit the wall. They couldn’t take it any further. And somehow, he was the only one that could see it.

“Look, once I finally get this goddess shit straight…” She hesitated, wide-eyed and tense. “I need you. To help remind me what it’s like to give a shit about other people. To _want _to risk your life to save them.”

Quentin closed his eyes briefly before looking back up at her, helplessly.

Great, add it to the list.

Margo needed him to protect Eliot, to keep an eye on the Monster and Eliot’s body while she did who-fucking-knew-what in Fillory. Eliot needed him to find a way to save him. Alice needed him to, what, tell her if she was a good person? Tell her if she was worth forgiving?

And now Julia _needed _him, too.

Quentin could barely do anything to help _himself; _how the fuck was he supposed to help anyone else?

And wanting to risk his life—

Well. Could he really say that came from caring about other people? Maybe he was just fucking tired.

This was all useless, and pointless, and empty—and he was getting buried under it.

“Jules—” he started.

And maybe he was going to avoid the subject again, or maybe he was going to finally say something. Maybe he was finally going to tell her how strung out he was, how _hopeless _he felt—how every moment he had to look at that fucking monster wear Eliot’s face wore him down, and _why _it hurt so much. Maybe he was going to finally tell her everything—finally search for the solace he’d once had with Julia, when they were kids and he was depressed and she was always there for him.

He’d never know, because there was a knock on the door, and everyone’s attentions were diverted to something new.

Quentin couldn’t bring himself to care. He couldn’t bring himself to participate. It was over.

He poured himself another drink as everyone else talked, engrossed in what-fucking-ever. Clutching the glass, he headed up the stairs. No one tried to follow. Or even noticed, probably. He got to the room he’d been sleeping in, closing the door and locking it behind him. He leaned his forehead into it, breathing out heavily.

“Well. There it is, right?”

He sighed, smacking his palm hard against the door before straightening up and turning around.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Where are you?”

He paced, letting out a half-frantic laugh. God, everything was falling apart. The world was off-kilter. And it was his responsibility, it was his _fucking _responsibility and he was fucking it up.

But who cared, right? It was over, it was all _over. _There was nothing left.

It was over.

Everything in Quentin, for months, had felt precariously balanced, held together by weakened string. He was standing on the edge of a cliff, he was balanced on a tightrope, he was hanging by a thread. Pick your metaphor.

The string snapped, in any case, and Quentin was freefalling. And how did no one else _see it? _How hopeless it all was? Everyone downstairs, they were regrouping, they were talking, they were trying to figure shit out—

Just what the fuck was there to figure out?

They _lost. _

It was _over. _

Quentin rubbed his hands down his face, groaning. He stopped pacing, looking up at the ceiling.

“Okay, I’ve given up!” Quentin called out to the empty room. “Come _on_, I couldn’t get rid of you for _months, _and _now _you won’t show?”

In his memories as Brian, all he’d wanted was to be free of the Monster. Brian had spent so long trying to escape, trying to coddle and soothe his way out of the Monster’s control. Brian, whose problems had no sharp edges, facing something horrifying and deadly and unpredictable. And just trying to survive it.

Until—

_I’m not your pal. Or your playmate. And I’m not scared of you anymore. So why don’t you just fucking kill me?_

Because even Brian, with his mundane sanded-down life, with his contentment and his brain that never broke, even _he _was ready to give up and let the Monster kill him. After those months, after all that trauma, after every fucking broken bone and blood splatter…

The most sane, normal, happy person Quentin had ever been was telling the Monster to kill him.

So what the _fuck _was _Quentin_ supposed to do? With these memories, with these problems, with all of it.

He was buried under it.

Half-laughing, he finished his drink in two long gulps.

He clutched the empty glass, his heart pounding like it wanted to break his ribs. He was so _fucking _tired. Having to deal with Alice being back, after she’d _promised _to stay away—

Having to deal with Julia’s goddess bullshit—

Babysitting the fucking Monster, Margo not being around, Kady’s hedge witch shit—

And the whole time, _Eliot—_

Quentin hurled the glass against the wall. It shattered on impact.

It wasn’t as cathartic as breaking all those toy planes.

“Fuck,” Quentin breathed.

The twisting pit of anger was waning, dangerously. He tried to cling to it, tried to cling to the irritation prickling at his skin and the restlessness in his hands, the bitterness that made him throw the glass. If he stopped being angry, if he stopped being bitter, the hopelessness would swallow him whole.

He half-collapsed to the floor, leaning against the foot of his bed and pulling his knees up to his chest.

Eliot was alive—or, at least, had been when Penny 23 confirmed it just those few days ago.

The brief flicker of hope Quentin had felt when 23 had said it wasn’t enough to survive on, though.

These days, nothing was enough to survive on.

Quentin wanted to scream.

He’d never felt this hopeless.

And the Monster _wasn’t here. _He wasn’t coming. Because he’d gotten that last piece—

It was over. They’d failed, they’d all failed, and there was no way to save Eliot. 

_He’d _failed.

How was he supposed to live with it?

“Shit, Eliot,” Quentin murmured to the empty room. “I really fucking miss you. I don’t want to give up on you, but what am I supposed to do here?”

He rubbed a hand down his face. His eyes were dry.

“Can you just fucking tell me what I’m supposed to _do? _Because I don’t fucking know anymore, alright? I don’t know.”

He tried to imagine Eliot kneeling beside him, looking at him with those concerned, apprehensive eyes. Putting a gentle arm around his shoulder. Telling him they could do this, they could figure it out. He tried to imagine the kind of comfort he could only ever get from Eliot’s warmth.

He tried to imagine Eliot’s eyes, but all he could see was the monster. It was too late.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a thin sigh. “I want to blame you, you know. I want to blame you for being so _fucking _stupid, bringing that goddamn gun and shooting the monster. You should’ve just let me stay at Blackspire. Why did you have to stop me? Why did you have to _care?” _

Eliot’s voice came back through his mind—

_Fifty years. Who gets proof of concept like that? _

_Peaches and plums, motherfucker. I’m alive in here. _

Would he ever get to know what Eliot meant? Would he ever get to ask? Would Quentin ever know if that small thread of hope in his stupid, helpless heart was right?

_Proof of concept. _

“Eliot, you were it for me. You’re _it_ for me. God, why can’t you just _be _here?”

Quentin leaned his head back, looking up at the ceiling. A blur of tears was finally welling in his eyes. After all this, he could still cry.

He swallowed, not wanting to admit the twisting pain in his chest he’d felt ever since the identity spell broke.

“I… I _need _you, El. I need you.”

But Eliot wasn’t there to hear it.

It didn’t matter anymore.

It was over.


End file.
